Being Christian and black

When I was growing up, my parents weren’t real strict about going to church When my parents were together, we lived in Maryland and went a big church, not a super mega church, but around 200 or so people…big enough where you could go and not be noticed. When my parents separated and we moved to NC, the church was smaller and we could go speak to the pastor and shake his hand after service (not that I ever really wanted to ;-) ) I knew there was a God and He was good and all that, I just wasn’t into reading the bible, nor was I aware of other religions, or if I did I didn’t know anything about them and just assumed the popular misconception “all paths lead to the same destination.”
When I got to college and took my first “African-American” history course I was on fire for pro-black! Let my hair grow out to a mini-fro, got an Ankh necklace and was reading about black firsts and cointelpro and all that. I would participate in the libation thing when we would have speakers, acknowledging “our ancestors.” That was before the poetry thing got real big, but everybody seemed to down with “going back to our roots”, referring to African origins of Afro-American social behavior. That was in the early and mid-90’s.
Skip ahead to 2000, when I became a born again Christian. I was going to poetry events and panel discussions, etc. but I hadn’t seen a libation ceremony for a long time. It had never dawned on me until earlier this year when I went with some friends to an event that had dancers and other performers that performed the ceremony. That African tradition ceremonial stuff is not Christian! It really hit me when the guy was speaking (or chanting) “…and we honor the GODS…” BING my spidey sense started tingling…he said Gods with an S, that ain’t Jesus. Some other stuff he said that was Kiswahili that I didn’t understand and honored a CREATOR and the ANCESTORS. I seriously was not feeling this guy. I felt really weird because we were all holding hands in a circle and everything, repeating after him. So then I thought about all the times in the past I had done that, clueless…and all the people doing it now, clueless. Praising “The Gods” in your poetry, calling upon the “Spirit of the Creator” then thanking “the Lord” for your talent? Which Lord are you talking about hun? So for a minute I was like “so does being a Christian mean I can’t be ‘black’?” Then I realized those are both really broad terms, and YES, I can be both. I’m not African, meaning although that may have been how they did/do it, it’s not how I do it. I also realized how so many people are clueless, thinking that stuff doesn’t matter, or even worse that it’s all the same. But that’s not just with African traditions, look how many rappers misogynise women, then thank God for letting them win an award. So many things I see differently now. I know I am nowhere near perfect, and I don’t try to be, so I am just observant and offer my opinion or insight when asked. Boy that’s hard sometimes.